Reconciliation through Storytelling

“Reconciliation can only happen if somebody is interested in actually learning and being a part of that conversation. And so I think engagement and awareness of the culture in general is really the first step.”

This is an inspirational quote from a young Canadian native called Adrian Duke, living in Vancouver and working on a very ambitious project: Duke is building a storytelling app with indigenous stories that are attached to land and cities all across the country. The app works much like Pokemon GO, it shows the user real-time information as they follow the tracks laid out on their phone. Duke’s amazing project received funding from the government’s Department of Canadian Heritage and as 200.000 dollars were already spent on building the software, he is now working on crowdsourcing the stories itself; granting 50 dollars as a reward for every submission. Up till now he only has 6 and wants to work up to 600 before the beginning of june, the official release of the app.

The app is supposed to be a step towards a full reconciliation of Canadian indigenous knowledge. David Gaertner, an expert in digital storytelling with the university of British Colombia says he loves the idea, but it’s not entirely new. There have been previous attempts at re-layering stories upon the land (through native storytelling). According to Gaertner the Survivors Speak series are a very powerful example. You can watch a short fragment right over here: